3ie Impact - Website

Purpose

A lot of time and money is spent on unsuccessful or inefficient development programmes simply because we lack evidence of what works. Credible findings on the impact of development programmes is therefore crucial for designing effective policies that can improve the lives of people.

3ie's goal was to to reach policy makers. As their existing website had grown quickly too, it was clear that information was getting lost among the labyrinth-like architecture and that key messages to policy makers and researchers was also getting lost. They needed to say 'Come to us for evidence on what works in International Development' and they needed to back that statement up with a good solid search mechanism that worked.

People

Client and Partners

3ie plays the dual role of a funding agency and a knowledge broker. They
fund new impact evaluations of development interventions, offer
resources and training, and provide quality assurance services. By
developing the capacity to produce and use impact evaluations, 3ie hopes
to build a culture of evidence-based policymaking. This international organization is head-quartered in India and is funded by the DFID and Gates foundation.

Who Benefits?

Their website and services are accessed by a range of uses including policy makers, researchers, funders and partners. Internal users include site editors, the evaluation team and directors. 3ie launched their new site, designed by Aptivate, in June 2012 and since then, the average user rate has tripled!

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Process

Aptivate was invited by 3ie to evaluate the effectiveness of 3ie's existing website and IT service provider. Alan and Chris spent a week in Delhi with the 3ie team doing this evaluation before we were then awarded the tender of carrying out the redesign of the website.

Our first mission was to carry out a period of user research. This involved mapping all users, domain modelling and work flows for 3ie. With this information we were able to design a new site architecture and navigation. Development of the site was done over 6 iterations (12 weeks) from November 2011 and June 2012. We used an agile process working with a product owner from the 3ie team who prioritised user stories, and using an online kanban tool to track project progress. We held bi-weekly demonstrations with the developers and 3ie stakeholders. Functionality was tested with users at every release and new software was continuously being delivered to the staging site.

Content was added by the communication team in Delhi. It became clear to all of us that there was a 'lot' of content to add. Together with a web copywriter we facilitated the product owner in designing pages based on user needs. The last week of development saw Jay going out to Delhi to push the final content through and oversee any final design changes before launch on June 1st.

The new website was launched in June 2012. Feedback on the site has been great and the 3ie team are happily keeping it fresh by posting regular news, events and jobs on the announcement block as well as adding new evaluations to the evidence database.

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Code

Django CMS was an ideal choice to help us meet our clients needs. Built on top of the Django framework, it includes many features out of the box including multiple language support, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and front end editing. These features enabled us to quickly build a dynamic and interesting site.

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